DB4 Water Build

Soldato
Joined
25 Jan 2006
Posts
3,071
Location
Gateshead, Newcastle
Hi guys,

Decided to get back into gaming / building so ive gone for something different, ATX doesnt do it for me its far to easy to throw it all in a case and get it all working so ive decided on a custom water loop into a DB4 case. Why? i liked the case and after reading others buildings using the heat pipes i wasn't convinced of their effectiveness after all its a round pipe touching a flat surface for 50mm, so has virtually no contact area with the amazingly designed heatsink side panels.

My aim is to go fanless water cooled (power supply being an exception at the moment, ill see how it goes before voiding the warranty and cutting the fan) it states fanless at low outputs so time will tell.

The spec:

Straecom DB4 with custom milled sides
Asus Strix Z270i
i5-7600K
Corsair Vengence 8gb DDR4 2400
Corsair MP500 240GB M2 SSD
Corsair SF450 450W power supply
Zotac GTX 1060 3GB

Water:

EK-Supremacy AX for both cpu and gpu (will need custom mounts)
EK-ACR SPC-60 PWM pump and res combo
Custom water blocks utilising the case heatsinks.

Unboxing :

I knew the reviews had said the panels were heavy i just wasnt expecting this :


For perspective :




The water-cooling has its issues right from the get go but for me the fun is overcoming these and getting a unique solution going. Germanic reaction is the big one, and luckily for me EK have just released an all aluminium kit that i will be using. Even after i overcome this i really have no idea if this will work making custom radiators but hey it'll be an experiment none the less. In theory the contact area is much much larger than that of using the heat pipes with a more effective method of actually getting the heat to the heatsinks, so in theory it should work. Straecom have said each panel will take 65W of heat dissipation so there is a theoretical 260W of dissipation to be had. I know previous people have struggled to reach these figures, notably the Ryzen build in the DB4.



So heres the plan, ive contacted several local companies to CNC the side panels of the DB4 in a 6 pass configuration similar to the image below with an 8mm acrylic top, i was initially going to use hard drive water blocks from Koolance but they worked out about £50 each before getting them over from america with the vat etc to go on top which has made me look at this custom solution :



2 * 4MM glass coasters testing space to allow the factory mounting rails to be used:






4.5mm heatsink thickness :








Plan B :

 
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